RSA Awards Announcement

Outstanding Contributions in Mathematics, Industry and Public Policy Honored at Annual RSA Security Conference

RSA DATA SECURITY CONFERENCE, SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- RSA Data Security, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Security Dynamics Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: SDTI), today announced that John M. Pollard, a noted mathematician; John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and Compaq Computer's Atalla Division were named winners of the 1999 RSA Award. The prizes were awarded today to the three recipients by Jim Bidzos, president of RSA at the opening session of the 1999 RSA Data Security Conference in San Jose. Instituted last year, RSA's award recognizes individuals and organizations that have made significant, ongoing contributions to security issues and cryptography in the areas of mathematics, public policy and industry.

"Each recipient has made a tremendous contribution to the advancement of electronic commerce and Internet security as well as raising public awareness to support this industry's long-term success," said Bidzos. "Pollard, Compaq and Gilmore all deserve recognition for their work in making the Internet a more conducive place for conducting electronic commerce, and for promoting strong security as the way to achieve that goal."

The RSA Award in Mathematics is presented to an individual or organization that has made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of cryptographic sciences in the field of mathematics and its application.

The RSA Award in Industry goes to an individual or organization who has most facilitated the widespread use or application of advanced cryptographic technologies in the marketplace.

The RSA Award in Public Policy is presented to the individual or organization that has contributed most significantly to the application of cryptographic technologies towards the advancement of personal privacy, civil justice and basic human rights.

The award winners were selected by a committee with members from industry, the academic community and the public sector.

John M. Pollard

John M. Pollard is a mathematician, number theorist and researcher for many years at British Telecom before retiring, and best known for his cryptographic research. Pollard devised the algorithms that have become the best benchmarks for determining the key size required for adequately securing systems with encryption. Because Pollard's algorithms provide the fastest ways to "crack" public-key encrypted messages by helping to find the private key, they are for the same reason useful for determining how large a key is necessary to provide adequate protection by calculating how long it would take to crack using Pollard's methods. Among the several important prime factoring algorithms Pollard has published, he is best known for his Rho Method, an algorithm for solving the discrete logarithm and elliptic curve discrete logarithm, developed in late 70s, also known as the Monte Carlo Factorization Method. Pollard published his p-1 Factorization Method (based on Fermat's little theorem) in 1974, and also the related p+1 Factorization Method, two well-known algorithms that attempt to find a prime factor p of a number N by exploiting properties of p-1 and p+1. In 1988 Pollard introduced the number field sieve factoring algorithm, which today is the fastest known algorithm for factoring "large" integers that do not contain any "small" divisors.

Atalla Security Products, Compaq

The Atalla Security Products Group of Compaq has been a pioneer in making security technology embedded in hardware commercially viable, high-performance and industrial-strength. The company was founded in 1972, acquired by Tandem Computers in 1987 and then became a part of Compaq Computer Corporation as part of its merger with Tandem. The Atalla Division's unique contribution is in the area of embedded cryptography in specialized hardware that is designed to safeguard Automated Teller Machine and EFT/POS transactions, and accelerate overall system throughput. As the world's leading provider of hardware-based security processors, their products are installed in more than 1,250 financial institutions around the world. Their Internet Security Processor products bridge symmetric and public key cryptosystems, and protect vital private key information. Over the years, the Atalla Security Products Division of Compaq has demonstrated a strong commitment to public key cryptography and has been a driving force in the evolution of standards in banking and security technology throughout the enterprise.

John Gilmore

John Gilmore is an entrepreneur and civil libertarian. He was an early employee of Sun Microsystems, and co-founded Cygnus Solutions, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Cypherpunks, and the Internet's "alt" newsgroups, and is currently a board member of Moniker pty ltd, the Internet Society, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Gilmore leads the EFF's efforts on cryptography policy and managed the creation of the EFF DES Cracker, the first unclassified hardware for cracking DES-encoded messages, easily winning RSA's DES-II Challenge in less than three days in 1998. He has twenty-five years of experience in the computer industry, including programming, hardware and software design, and management. Gilmore is a significant contributor to the worldwide open sourceware (free software) development effort. His advocacy efforts on encryption policy aim to improve public understanding of this fundamental technology for privacy and accountability in open societies.

About the 1998 RSA Data Security Conference

The 1999 RSA Data Security Conference, which opened in San Jose today, Monday, January 18, with keynote sessions from noted industry leaders, cryptographers and government policy makers, will continue though Thursday, January 21 with more than 120 scheduled panels, conference sessions and classes, plus product and technology exhibits from nearly 140 leading security, cryptography and electronic commerce vendors. The four-day conference presents an opportunity to get up-to-the-minute information on the latest commercial, regulatory and technical issues affecting this dynamic field. The conference program is organized along multiple tracks designed for mathematicians, scientists and academics, developers, programmers, lawmakers, marketing executives, and others who need to stay abreast of the latest in technical, regulatory and market issues related to cryptography and security. For additional information about the conference, visit www.rsa.com.

For complete information on EFF's DES Cracker see http://www.eff.org/descracker.

Please send any questions or comments to webmaster@eff.org